Distance
by netherfield
Summary: Lorelai and life a few years down the road. Chapter 3 is up.
1. Chapter 1

Odd little quiet moments could be the most haunting.

She had no clear memory of her physical touch, could remember no hugs or tickling of hair in her face when they were playful or snuggly with one another, even as a child. They had never been that way, after all.

So it was other things which brought her back.

She could stand, leaning over the counter in the kitchen at the Inn, buttering a piece of toast, and quite suddenly feel her mother. In this million-times repeated ritual, weird though it was, Emily felt close.

Her mother's usual breakfast of a single slice of toast, a soft-boiled egg, fruit and coffee had remained resolutely consistent through out her life, save the six weeks she'd gone to bed when her daughter left. And because she had once experienced daily life with her mother, had once known the intimate rhythms of her household and all its attendant scents and sounds, for some reason she felt her mother with the toast.

Funny that such a force of a woman as Emily Gilmore should be reduced to a quiet moment of toast buttering. But there you go. With your mother it is the little things too. Not just the hurtful arguments and the rare moments of crystalized connection. And as she stood, buttering toast yet again, feeling her mother steal quietly into her being, hovering with her, she did not well up as she had so often in the beginning. The ache of loss was still acute, but she was able to squeeze back the tears now. This was now part of her morning routine in the six months since her mother's death, along with the toast.

She did fleetingly wonder in what way she might one day haunt her own daughter. What little things would jar Rory suddenly from an ordinary moment into the presence of her departed self? She hoped it would be laughter, or frozen pizza rolls, or maybe even baby blue cashmere. She really didn't want to linger on with something like toast.

And, since she was still pissed at her mother for dying at all, she took a certain mutinous pleasure in knowing that somewhere in the great beyond Emily was surely fuming at being associated with something so common (_"It is one of the few foods, the British do correctly, Lorelai, it should only be browned on one side, you know..."_)

...And, following pattern, she was at once contrite at this wicked thought progression. Truly, she knew, she was angry for the loss, not only of her mother but at what they were never able to achieve between and for one another in life. She'd seen enough Dr. Phil to know that.

So, what-the-hell. You eat the toast and gulp some coffee and shake off your mother, who is not close by at all really, and get on with your day. You think again of your daughter, and wonder what country she is in now, and if she'll remember to call this week. And then wonder if your husband will come home, as he does often enough, silent and uncommunicative.

We are none of us perfect, after all. She knows this about herself too, and that part of her own lacking is the struggle she has to accept the canyons that must come in life. She will instead stretch and stretch to span the distance though she now knows that sometimes you just can't do that. Sometimes your mother really is gone, your daughter blithely progressing through a life far away about which you know little, and your husband has gone through yet another evening having uttered scarcely a word.

She is old enough now to know that this does not need to be tragic. That her mother will be with her again when next she butters toast, her daughter will remember to call at some point, and her husband will shake it off, smile in that way that still bores straight to her true center, and the canyon that had yawned between them all will reseal. Until next time.

And she can remember moments when her loved ones were not standing so far away and blurred. And remembering those moments helps her know that they will come again. That this is the way her world works.

At the house, after her mother's funeral, the women came up to tell her about her mother. As if her mother was a stranger to her. And, of course, she was. You can't ever separate the mother out from the woman. No child can. Even one in her forties. But it seemed like a bizarre kind of advertising campaign. As if they were trying to sell her on her own mother...

'She was so strong, your mother, she could face down anyone. Even _The Plaza_, darling...'

'She always won, your mother. I can still remember her saying: Creme Brulee is only a fad, Evelyn, it'll be gone faster than you can say Cherries Jubilee, my dear. Always go with a classic mousse... And she was right, of course. Your mother was always right.'

'My dear, I will never forget the way she shamed Henry Lowenstein into bidding higher! She was brilliant. It's so sad, really. What will we do without her?'

Well, she had done plenty without her.

Without Emily Gilmore. And yet, now truly without her, she was missing something. And in quiet moments over coffee and toast in the morning, when she felt her mother most strongly, she could only stare unfocused out the window, past the herb garden, and into the trees in the distance.


	2. Chapter 2

She was grateful for what time her mother had with her son, she supposed. Although little boy-world was about as comprehensible to Emily as a George Foreman grill.

(And, if she were honest, it wasn't so crystal to her either)

But the fact of him had delighted Emily.

His experimentation with the French soap in the guest powder room, however, had not. And though she had clapped her hand over his mouth before he could clearly holler, 'You won't get Muscle-Man this time, Grandma!'as Emily gaped, startled beyond speech, at the formerly lovely toile wallpaper, she had not screeched at the little guy after all.

That was his mother's job, she gritted her teeth at the memory: _Brat._

No, in life Emily had never quite appreciated the hilarity of boys. Her own level of appreciation, in fact, was as variable as a hot flash.

She gazed down the long hall to the little man's ajar door, and then padded softly to it.

He looked even younger asleep, if that was possible, as she straightened the covers around him. He had his father's stillness in sleep, which belied his mother's hyperactivity in wide-awake-ville.

And suddenly she was crying.

Not the loud gulping sobs which had unaccountably bubbled up from nowhere in the weeks following Emily's death—at the oddest times; while folding laundry, or walking through the market. But a hollow, silent, slow cry.

Things were going too fast, too fast, even though nothing was really happening at all.

Work was well, the dramatic mini-series that had been her life while her mother still lived had settled to more of a cozy sort of dramedy. A bittersweet one in which walks in the snow were meaningful.

No, things weren't fast in the old way.

Fast in the new way, though. Fast in the way your child suddenly looks older after getting a haircut. Or, in the laugh you choke back when he later catches a glance of himself in a window and says, 'I forgot I look like that now'. Fast in the way that now your parents are gone and here your child has already grown into someone else.

Someone older whom they do not know.

And, of course, this is right, and the way things should be. And we can't all keep tripping down main street in stilettos and over-priced jeans forever.

But how sad it is that just when balance has been struck, just when the complete picture is in place, and even though you have to keep adjusting the horizontal hold so it doesn't blur away...

Just when you've got the trick of things, in other words, the one person who you still want to be proud of you, if she ever was, has gone.

_Has gone_.

And fast again, because then the little guy, this small constantly-scraped-somewhere human, for whom you would die, who drives his father insane with jam at breakfast every morning, has awakened and needs to pee. And he is still so half asleep, you have to hurry ahead of him to open the bathroom door so he won't conk right into it...

That fast. The present becoming the distant past so quickly.

Too fast to dwell. That's what her life is. Which, she supposes, is how it's designed to be.

So she swipes away the few fallen tears.

God, how she'd love to veg in front of an old movie right now.

But there's work tomorrow, and school for the little guy, and Rory's supposed to call, and a thousand other things too.

So, as she settles in under the quilt, her husband already oblivious beside her, and twists her hair for awhile anyway, briefly fretting that forty-something is too old to be 'Mama', but what can she do?

She's sure as hell not sending him back.

And the visual this presents both repels her and makes her giggle at once.

She gets quiet fast though, when her husband stirs.

And in the quiet blackness of her room that night, however far away the parts of her heart which reside in her parents and grown daughter may be, she knows that her's is a lucky life.


	3. Chapter 3

Once upon a time... her daughter, his daughter, their son...

Trix would have been appalled. That's the sort of story you tell about other people, not about your own family.

Even if her grandmother had lived in France.

Emily, though... She kicked up a ruckus about it all. About the existence of each and every one of these children, their parentage, and what would surely happen in their lives because of it. It exhausted her to think of the storms her mother had kicked up in life.

Though, secretly, she was a little proud of their ferocity.

In hindsight, that is.

She could remember a time, a simpler time, when her life had been less open, and when she'd been younger and therefore more afraid. When it had been She And Rory Alone. With just those capital letters.

They Alone.

She had fretted about money and exerted every molecule of energy she had to not let her daughter see that. Only to find out, much, much later, just how bad her acting had been. And how very wise her daughter was.

About most stuff.

One autumn, all those years ago, she had bartered with Miss Patty: She would make the costumes for her ballet if she would give Rory lessons. Rory had just finished reading 'Ballet Shoes' and had liked Posy Fossil best, so ballet lessons it had to be. Even years after this phase had blown up in her face and ever-growing feet, Rory refused to watch any Meg Ryan movies after the blonde had co-opted the 'shoe books' in 'You've Got Mail'.

'They were mine first!'

But that ballet. Absolutely hilarious. 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' on that tiny stage with the full Mendelsohn score cranking on a turntable. Every girl in town had wanted to be the fairy queen, and every boy bribed or conscripted into tights.

And Rory and Lane the most beautiful little fairies of all: Cobweb and Mustardseed!

And she had stitched every tutu; about a thousand miles of green tulle, and hot-glued on little sequins, and cut leaves from felt and construction paper until her fingers ached and she could peel the dried glue off them in layers.

But the night of the performance---a perfect, crisp, starry, Stars' Hollow night---every child in town danced. And every child was beautiful and she had laughed and applauded wildly through her tears with all the other mothers.

It hadn't mattered who tripped, it hadn't mattered whose leaves had fallen off, it hadn't mattered that she was young and worried about money... It had been a pure moment.

Until she felt it for the first time. That clench of guilt which would and surely did come again.

Maybe it was because she and Rory, that night of dancing, finally truly did belong to a community of their own. That they were at last completely home.

Perhaps it was because she was now old enough to 'get it' a bit, or at least was mother enough.

But she felt the first pang of regret that night.

And contrition. Because her mother would have loved of all things to see Rory dance as a fairy. Hell, her mother would have loved to have seen Lorelai dance as a fairy once upon a time. And even though she knew it would have been awful: That Emily would have sneered at the homemade costumes and have gone on to pull every connection she had to transfer Rory to the Royal Ballet the very next day...

Despite all this she was vexed at herself for not having called her parents and invited them.

And that's how magic moments become bitter. Magic and bitter at once. What would be the cute combo word for that?

Mitter?

No, the word would be sorrow.

'I'm sorry, Mom,' she thought then.

She turned off the tv then and leaned over to jostle her husband gently awake.

"Let's go upstairs," she whispered.

"Hmmm..." he sighed and stretched.

Three children between them, one asleep under their roof even now, she counted as she pushed her happily-ever-after up the stairs.

And does Emily know?

Does her mother hear the little apologies she thought then and still thinks now. Or is she past caring, so far and distant away as she is?


End file.
